“She was like the perfect, non-camp hybrid of all the female New York characters that animated my romantic view of the city before I lived there: Eloise, Betty Comden, Lillian Hellman, Auntie Mame, Mary McCarthy, Elaine May, ­Gloria Steinem, and Amy, the hopelessly articulate and vulnerable bride-to-be who’d been originated by a striking Nora look-and-sound-alike (Beth Howland) in the 1970 Sondheim musical Company.”